During the long development cycle for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, franchise overseer Eiji Aonuma repeatedly spoke about breaking the series’ conventions. With the game’s release this year after many painful delays, it became clear that Aonuma’s stated aims weren’t mere lip service.
The fact that this new-groove Zelda arrived alongside the Switch (Nintendo’s latest system and the successor to the tepidly-received Wii U) made it seem like some sort of mission statement for Nintendo as a whole: they’re reexamining their core values as they continue their quest to delight via innovation, craftsmanship, and connecting with players of all stripes.
As they developed Breath of the Wild, Zelda’s design team correctly identified that the increasing linearity and conservatism of the series’ recent games had stifled their sense of adventure and alienated many players both old and new.
Their response to this problem was to craft a massive, immersive world of staggering possibility and freedom, allowing players to approach any given challenge in a variety of ways. Open worlds aren’t new in video games, but they were new to Nintendo. That the company’s developers approached the genre with such polish and panache is a testament to their design mastery.
Nintendo didn’t play it safe with this game. They took a well-worn franchise in a bold new direction and executed superbly on their vision. You have to applaud their dedication to crafting something that feels refreshing and reinvigorating for this time-honored series while still feeling like a proper evolutionary step.
One can quibble with the game’s design choices here and there, and I’ve heard complaints about the lack of dungeons, weapon fragility, and so on. But in my time with the game, getting truly lost in the exquisitely-crafted and beautifully stylized world Nintendo’s designers made just for us to play around in, I had so many moments of discovery, danger, surprise, and joy that I can only think of this game as the ultimate adventure.
And that is just what I’ve always wanted from a Zelda game, regardless of whether there’s a Triforce, dungeon, green tunic, or whatever else. Zelda games have always delivered adventure, but in recent titles it has increasingly felt like it was the developers’ carefully curated adventure. With Breath of the Wild, it really felt like it was my adventure, on my terms. That was a really special feeling for a longtime series fan.
For me this game has been a delight from start to finish and is my most cherished of 2017. It’s one of the greatest I’ve ever played, in fact. If this is any indication of the future of the series, I can honestly say I’m more excited for the further adventures of Link and Zelda than I have been in 20 years.